Aymara

Recent estimates indicate that 80% of the 1.6 million remaining speakers have now moved away from the land and have based themselves in cities where they are employed in informal and non-mainstream economic activities. Until quite recently, the practice of pongaje –domestic service that the Indian tenants were supposed to provide voluntarily –continued as a subtle form of slavery inside the rich caciques of Peru and Bolivia.

The remaining 20% still live in rural areas eking out an existence as agriculturists and herders. Coarse grass supports llama and alpaca herds. Staple crops still include the potato, plus oca, ullucu, quinoa, corn, beans, barley and wheat. Aymara clothing copies, in crude homespun, earlier Spanish colonial models. Men wear conical, ear-flapped, knitted wool gorros; women wear round, native-made wool derbies, with wool wimples in cold weather. The single-room, rectangular, gabled Aymara house, about 2.5 by 3 metres in size, is made of turf, thatched with wild grass over pole rafters. It contains a family sleeping platform of mud at one end and a clay stove near the door. The basic social unit is the extended family, consisting of a man and his brothers, their wives, sons and unmarried daughters, living in a cluster of houses within a compound.

The Aymara who are still living on or beside Lake Titicaca itself fish, hunt birds and live off the lake plants. The most important are the reeds which they use to build their boats, houses and the foundations of their ‘floating islands’.

The ancient Aymara people worshipped many different local Gods. The God Thunupa is the personification of the different agents in nature –sun, wind, rain or hail –which would affect the harvest for better or worse. The Goddess Pachamama –mother earth and the provider of food and pasture –is still worshipped today. In the past, this Goddess demanded sacrifices –the foetus of a llama was one of her favourite requests.

The Aymara regarded, and still regard, their Gods as their protectors, and identify them with the hills surrounding their homes. Each hill is given an individual name and is invoked as the local guardian. Another important part of Aymara spirituality is the practice of ritual medicine and the use of natural healing remedies by the Yatiris or shaman. Since times immemorial, up to the twenty-first century, the most skilled Yatiris came from the village of Kallawaya, in the Cordillera Charazani, in Bolivia.  

The ancient Aymara societies worshipped the dead and believed that each person, after death, became a God. Each God was given its own Chullpa or shrine. The level of skill and workmanship employed in the finish of these Chullpas depended on the status of the deceased. The sites of Sillustani and Cutimbo are examples of the tombs of the ancient elite among the Lupaqas and Collas. The Spanish authorities destroyed many of the Chullpas but were unable to defeat nature herself –the lakes, hills and mountains, so much at the heart of Aymara spirituality, are still worshipped today.

Aymara culture has a wealth of folk dance and music –the towns of Oruro and Puno have become the folkloric capitals of Bolivia and Peru. Aymara folkdance has been classified as either “native” or “mestizo”. The origin of the native dance goes back to well before the Spanish conquest. The Chaqallus, Lawa k’umus, Chuqilas and K’usillos are performed only occasionally by the Aymara still living in rural areas. Mestizo dancing is post-conquest and can be seen mostly on Saints’ days and at local festivals. La Diablada, El Caporal and La Morenada –all examples of this style of dance –are especially popular in the towns and villages on the Titicaca plateau. The dress worn by the dancers, traje de luces, like the suit worn by a Spanish bullfighter, is highly ornamented with imitation jewellery.

The most widely known Andean music is performed by four basic instruments: siqu (siku), charango, bombo and quena. The siqu is of Aymara origin, and the players of this instrument, as a group, or those who dance to this music, are known as Siquris. In Aymara, the suffix –iri, describes the actor or doer, so siquri in Aymara means the player or performer of Siqu. The charango was introduced after the Spanish conquest. It was, originally, made out of the carapace of the armadillo, known in Aymara as Khirkhinchu. The majority of historians claim the Khirkhinchu first originated in Aymara territory, at Potosi, in the seventeenth century.